General Objective:Learning how to give good descriptions of pictures or scenery as it might be applied in subject-based classroom settings

Specific Objectives:1) Learn how to make short general descriptions of places/scenes2) Learn how to provide interesting details to support general descriptions of places3) Learn how to describe feelings in relation to places or scenes seen

Dialogue/Speaking Model:

Noticing:

1) Have students look out the window of the classroom and take turns giving some descriptions of what they can see.

2) Get students to open their books, cover the dialogue model with one hand and just examine the picture. Ask individual students to describe what they can see happening in the picture (teacher and students talking about a picture/photograph). Also ask them why they think the people in the scene are talking about the picture (perhaps as part of subject or project, or looking at vacation pictures).

3) Still covering the dialogue section, play the dialogue and let the students listen. Ask the students if what they heard confirmed their initial guesses about the scene from (2) above.

4) Allow students to read the dialogue and listen again. Ask them when and why this kind of scene description would happen in a normal classroom.

5) Ask the students as a group these questions and try to elicit answers from them:- Whose picture is this? [Jody's]- Where is the picture from? [Her vacation photos]- Who gives a general (quick) description of the picture? [Dan]- How does Jenny improve this first description? [She adds more detail to say what is or isn't in the picture, how things look]- What extra information does Dan add to Jenny's description? [How the picture makes him feel]

6) Get students into groups of 2-3 and have them practice the conversation together, taking turns with different roles.

7) Ask students to find and shade information in the conversation according to this color scheme:- General description (blue)- Details (green)- Feelings (yellow)

Explain to the students that when they are asked to describe pictures for projects, presentations or just textbook content, they can use the three elements (general, details, feelings) to give good descriptions in speaking.

Drill Work:

1. Have students begin by closing their books and distribute blank paper to them. Use the drill variations as a listen and draw exercise, with the teacher reading out a variation and the students quickly sketching what they hear (e.g. "I can see sand and sea..."). Do this in a way that produces 3-6 new scenes on paper.2. Have students open their textbooks and refer to the drill patterns. Have individual students point to one of their sketches and describe it, using the drill examples as reference. Then have the students do this together in pairs.3. Apply the full drill set chorally, beginning with teacher and students together as a class repeating.4. Apply body language and hand-movements to the colored parts of the drill sequences, with students doing the actions as they say the drills out loud (for example, depicting mountains with arms, sand with a flattening motion, birds with the hands, feelings with facial expressions).5. Do a rotating drill with students taking turns with new sentences one after another. Inform the students that the rotating will continue until all sentences are being produced as fluently and clearly as possible.6. Have students in pairs quiz each other with the drills, with one student (book open) providing the intial model, and the other student producing a variation. Allow the students to correct each other.7. Using the model sentences, have students attempt to describe their classroom and/or the scenery outside.

Enunciation Practice:

1. Sounds:- Without looking at the textbook, model the long "oa" and "or" sounds for the students and have them repeat them.- Ask students to think of words they know in English that use either (or both) of these sounds and to say them out loud.- Open the textbook and point to the sounds section. Ask students to identify which "o" sound is being used in each row of words.- Have students listen and repeat the words after the teacher or CD track. Then apply a turn-taking drill with these words as with the drillwork described above (increasing fluency and clarity).- Ask students to get into pairs and make 2 simple sentences using each word. They can then present these to the class, with the teacher providing any necessary corrections.

2. Words:- Show the students how to pat their laps or clap with hands in the air above their heads. Then use a choral drill application with teacher first and students repeating - for each word they clap overhead for a stressed syllable in a word, and pat their laps for unstressed syllables. Have the students repeat the exercise in pairs or small groups.- Have students close their books. The teacher says the words, with occasional deliberate mistakes in the number of syllables or syllable stress. Students as a class attempt to correct the teacher. In pairs or small groups, students repeat the same activity, with students taking turns with the role just described for the teacher.- Get the students into pairs or groups and ask them to think of new words in English that follow the example words in terms of number of syllables and allocation of syllable stress. Check together as a class.

3. Sentences:

- Have students listen and repeat after the teacher or CD track, without looking in their books.- Apply the listen and repeat again while referring to the textbook.- Have students practice and repeat after each other in pairs.- Apply the same clap-pat action described above for words, except for stressed or unstressed words at sentence level

Review/Combination:

1. Refer students to all of the sections in the drill and enunciation sections. Apply a rotating turn-taking drill that covers all the drill sentences, words with sounds, words with syllable stress, and sentence stress patterns in one continuous sequence, applied throughout the class. Have students continue the rotation until the articulation is faster, more fluent and as clear as possible.

2. Allocate some funny actions to random elements throughout all four sections (drill, enunciation) and repeat the turn-taking rotation around the class again. Students perform the funny action whenever a marked item appears for their turn.

Controlled Practice - Scene Descriptions:

1. Ask students to cover the text section and look only at the picture. Give random individual students a chance to try and describe the scene without the benefit of the text description to the left.2. Have students (in pairs) fill in the gaps in the text, then check their answers by playing or reading aloud the correct version.3. Have the students practice the description together in pairs, taking turns with sentences first, then the whole description.4. Have students write out the description on a separate piece of paper, but changing the gap sections to include new words or elements. Based on the changed script, they can attempt to sketch the new scene produced. They then practice this in small groups.

Production Activity:

1. Have students (in pairs or small groups) first attempt to describe each of the pictures orally without writing anything down, but allowed to see the word bank and other sections of the unit.

2. Brainstorm as a class words and phrases that could be applied for each picture (in addition to the word bank). List these on the whiteboard for all to see.

3. Have students compose descriptions for each picture. Remind them to apply the skills they have learned (general/details/feelings) for each description, and to draw on sentence models from other parts of the unit so far.

4. Let students apply their descriptions in pairs, first while referring to their scripts, then without.

5. Allocate homework to memorize the descriptions, which each student will then present in the next class, without being allowed to look at any written text.

Follow up for next class/future classes:

1. Refer to students to their other textbooks (preferably for different subjects like science or social studies). Have students find and describe as many pictures as they can in their books, first without any reference to this unit's speaking materials, then later after reviewing this unit if they need reminders about how to build good descriptions using the general/details/feelings model.

2. Ask students to bring in some photographs from a recent vacation or trip. Get them to do presentations for the class, describing the pictures using the skills applied in this speaking unit.